"Nigga" untrademarkable?

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, I've heard "nigger" pronounced as [nIgr] by only one black person in
my entire life. It gave me the same creeps that hearing it pronounced by a
white person would have. So, I'm not sure what the OED means by "deliberate
adoption by some speakers." Oh, I see. The reference is only to the
development and adoption of the hip-hop spelling, as in "Niggaz Wit
Attitude." Never mind.

However, hip-hop hasn't "redefined" the word in any sense of the term. About
45 years ago, while reading a grammar of Yiddish, I was startled to discover
that "yid," a word that I had theretofore known only as a term of opprobium
for a Jew used by white Christians, was defined by this grammmar as "a Jew,
a man, a person, a human being," with no hint of there being anything
insulting about the term. I thought, "Hey, that's almost the same way that
[nIg@] works! It's an insult only when used by outsiders." I say "almost,"
because it is possible, under certain circumstances, for one black person to
insult another black person by calling him a [nIg@]. The so-called
"redefinition" has always been part of the definition of [nIg@].

-Wilson

On 3/15/06, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      "Nigga" untrademarkable?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There's an article in the Washington Post about comedian Damon Wayans
> trying to trademark the word "Nigga" for a hiphop clothing line:
>
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/14/AR2006031401960.html
>
> USPTO has in the past rejected any variant of the N-word as derogatory
> and therefore unsuitable for a trademark. One scholar is quoted as
> saying an exception should be made for "Nigga":
>
> -----
> Wayans, whose application was submitted early last year, could argue
> that the word he hopes to trademark, "Nigga," is different, says Todd
> Boyd, a professor of critical studies at the University of Southern
> California and author of the book "The New H.N.I.C.: The Death of
> Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop."
> "I don't think it's the same thing," Boyd says. "Hip-hop has redefined
> the word. It can mean a number of things. It can be a term of
> admiration. It can be a term of recognition."
> -----
>
> Wayans could always point to the OED3 etymology for "nigger":
>
> -----
> The resurgence of the form nigga (plural often niggaz) and other forms
> without final -r in late 20th-cent. use (esp. in representations of
> urban African-American speech) is prob. due to its deliberate adoption
> by some speakers as a distinct word, associated with neutral or
> positive senses (esp. senses 1c, 4, 5, and 7); cf. quot. 2001 at sense
> 7.
> ...
> 2001 Washington Monthly Apr. 51/2 In private conversations among
> blacks, Clinton is ghetto, a nigga (not nigger, mind you) -- terms
> that say: He is one of us.
> -----
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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